Wednesday, March 26, 2014

Recently a lot of players have had problems getting their names to display when playing En Garde, or on the leader boards. This was due to the system I had breaking down. The names are displayed with custom textures, which are auto-generated and uploaded to Second Life. The robot I used for this would frequently stop working.

Also, the process I used to make the name textures wasn't compatible with some third-party Second Life clients. The names would look all speckly and weird. There wasn't anything I could do about that, since it worked with the standard client and I can't control the code in the third-party clients.

But now I have a new system which should fix both of those problems. Now, everyone can make their own custom textures to display their names.

I'm sending out Name Display prims to all En Garde owners. To set your display name, you can make your own texture and drop it on any prim. Your custom name will be set in the system and will display on any En Garde piste you play. If you change your display name in Second Life, you can re-upload a new texture for En Garde. You can do this as many times as you want.

When you touch the Name Display prim it will give you a notecard detailing the process, and also some suggestions for the best way to format your texture. If you have problems, the owner of the piste should be able to help you. If you need to know how to upload a texture to Second Life, there's plenty of tutorials on that.

I hope I don't have to stress that everyone should keep their custom name display within the bounds of good taste.

This problem with the name display has been one of the most frequently requested fixes/improvements for En Garde, and I'm glad I finally got something up and running. Thanks to the owners who helped me debug the new system, and all the players for their patience.